Amy Reynolds and Catherine H. Crouch

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Editor's note: Science in Focus is on vacation in July, so we're going to the archives for science-related pieces from the pages of Books & Culture. This week we're featuring a piece by Amy Reynolds and Catherine H. Crouch from the September/October 2010 issue.

"After four years of research, at least one thing became clear: Much of what we believe about the faith lives of elite scientists is wrong." So Elaine Howard Ecklund begins the summary of her findings in Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think. Reporting the results of a carefully designed study, she provides a fascinating look into how scientists approach religion and spirituality, significantly improving on the state of knowledge in the field. Through research conducted at élite institutions, she corrects the myth that all scientists are opposed to religious people and ideas, and that science and religion are fundamentally irreconcilable. In doing so, she hopes to bring forward the voices of those scientists more open to respectful dialogue with people of faith.

Ecklund's work aims to support "the cause of translating science to a broader public audience, especially a religious audience." Her research documents three important matters: the religious demographics of élite scientists, the noteworthy lack of knowledge of many élite scientists about religious traditions, and their opinions about the proper role (if any) of religion on campus. Given that she perceives the conflict to exist primarily between religious non-scientists and non-religious scientists, she makes recommendations to both communities for how to pursue more constructive dialogue—as well as identifying the important role of "boundary pioneers," religious scientists who declare their faith publicly.

While her findings offer a rich trove of data on this understudied topic, Ecklund covers such broad ground in her interviews and surveys that her analysis blurs many important distinctions. As a result, some of the most challenging issues at the intersection of science and religion are neglected. For example, as a Christian natural scientist, I (Catherine) see the public conflict over the teaching of evolution in K-12 schools as calling for a very different, and in many ways simpler, response than ethical issues raised by science and technology; yet Ecklund's framing stories and her recommendations are focused on the conflicts over evolution. Furthermore, we would argue that there are significant differences between the natural and social sciences, with some of the most difficult conflicts between academia and religious commitment existing in the social sciences. Finally, the challenge of giving religiously informed views an appropriate voice on campuses and in academic societies is profoundly different from religiously sympathetic communication of science to the general public. Ecklund's analysis and framing focus on the public issues, but her data illustrate the depth of the challenges faced on campus.

On its own, documenting the religious and spiritual demographics of élite scientists is an important contribution of Ecklund's work. The research itself is well executed; she obtained survey responses from over 1,600 social and natural scientists at élite academic institutions (a respectable 75 percent response rate), and conducted 275 in-depth interviews. In contrast to the idea that all scientists are non-religious, she reveals a substantial rate of self-declared religious affiliation. Almost half, or 47 percent, declare some kind of faith commitment, far more than a conflict paradigm might suggest, though far fewer than those in the U.S. population as a whole. Her most significant finding is how profoundly the distribution of religious preferences among lite scientists differs from the general population. In addition to the non-religious being overrepresented, Jewish scholars are also found in high numbers (making up 16 percent of élite scientists). Although those of other religions (7 percent) and mainline Protestants (14 percent) are represented at rates similar to the general population, other Christians are strikingly underrepresented. This includes Catholics (9 percent of élite scientists), evangelicals (2 percent), and black Protestants (0.2 percent); although only a small minority in élite institutions, these three groups make up almost two-thirds of the U.S. population.

Ecklund finds that élite scientists are vitally interested in questions of meaning at the same time that a significant majority do not hold traditional religious beliefs. Although 47 percent report a religious affiliation, only 36 percent report believing in God. Pursuing questions of meaning has led 20 percent of scientists to claim a spiritual but not religious identity. About 8 percent of scientists, or almost half of the spiritual group, are what Ecklund deems "spiritual entrepreneurs." She describes this kind of spirituality as differing from the "thin," individualized religion we find in Bellah's Habits of the Heart (and among roughly 12 percent of the scientists she interviewed). As she states, "the effort of the spiritual scientists is more about pursuing reality and discovering the truthful aspects of spirituality that will be most in line with science." They are identified with a deep spirituality, engaged in spiritual practices and a search for meaning that they find coherent and reasonable—which traditional religion, they would argue, is not.

"From this time onward it was safe to call yerusolf an atheist"? The Roman inquisition didn't end until 1860; in 1858 they legally kidnapped a fevered jewish boy because in a moment of panic his babysitter baptized him and the law required baptized children be raised by catholics! (safe !murder)The fact that a handful of people were writing about atheism and suffering nothing more than jailtime is not exactly support for the idea that everyone who questioned god vocalized it, let alone scientists who aren't traditionally known for their risk-taking, as opposed to their hedging & caution! (Dunning-Kruger amirit?)Even now, in 21st century America, one's career political or otherwise may come under threat for expressing certain beliefs (especially in certain parts of the country). Our explicitly secular country didn't adopt the First Amendment until 1791, and a great many citizens ignore it to this day!I don't know why I keep responding to this anyway as Jeffrey has repeatedly pointed out the original statement had nothing to do with these details. One should reasonably understand "scientists" to refer to thinking done in a scientific manner while "religionists" refers to thinking done in a religious manner, with nothing precluding the possibility that the two types of thinking occur in a single individual at different times (or the same time for that matter). The fact that some people can tolerate great cognitive dissonance is incidental.Kenneth Miller is a scientist when discussing evolution and some aspects of biology, and a religionist when discussing theology and some other aspects of biology, but these effects are really due to the institutions themselves. Newton wrote on a huge variety of physics, theology, and alchemy (among others), so despite being among the greatest scientists in human history, he may also rightly be called a crank! So what?

Malcs

January 26, 201410:52pm

Rob doesn't gloss easily over the death of Jesus. He doesn't give it its preopr place in this interview, but when I listen to his work over the years, I know him to be very solid.He certainly has some areas I don't agree with, but he is certainly within the stream of Christian orthodoxy.Interestingly, I was talking to another friend and he noted that Bell is not too far from CS Lewis on this subject. It has been years since I read The Great Divorce. I need to.

Eliot

January 26, 20143:18am

The topic at hand is how many scientists CURRENTLY have a beilef in a supernatural god that intercedes in earthly affairs or at least that is how I interpret the question, and that's the interesting question. I don't think the study really answered it for the reasons outlined. The question of how much and what type of influence the Church had over the millenia is not relevant to the study at hand or Spencer's conjecture. The Church has controlled large swaths of the economic and political infrastructure of Western Civilization, and it's influence has not been just about god-beilef. It has sought to control education and research, tilting it towards it's own ends. I'm merely saying that we cannot know what the world would look like if this influence had not been there it might have advanced further, faster or perhaps the Church saved humnakind from destruction. Who knows? It's a question that cannot be answered. A true skeptic/scientist spends most of the time realizing how much we simply cannot know.Likewise, the beilefs of scientists hundreds of years ago have no relevance. Who knows what they would believe if they had the knowledge we have today about the natural world? Some truly believed in God, but they might've altered those beilefs if given today's information, certainly their theology, their idea of the nature of god, might change. How many scientists during the Inquisition feigned beilef to avoid persecution? How many scientists practiced false piety to get more funding? Were heretical findings suppressed, voluntarily or otherwise? Science has never operated in a vacuum.Personally, I wouldn't go so far as to say that believers are "dumber" (your word) than non-believers; I think that a lot of people have other more pressing concerns, and god-beilef is a cheap insurance for the eternity (Pascal's wager). This is evidenced by the finding that physicists and biologists tend to be more atheistic than other scientists and "soft" scientists in other studies*. This linked study provides a review in a journal, FWIW, and they mention the Ecklund study. My hypothesis is that the cosmological and ontological proofs of God have undergone large revisions over the past 150- 1000 years, thus those two fields have seen the largest reduction in god-beilef, or put another way, anyone who studies those fields would have to seriously re-think the established theology.Also, another thing I discovered: Ecklund's book was funded by the Templeton Foundation, which has an expressed purpose of promoting religious beilef in secular society, which should be considered. Do I really seem that argumentative? I suppose I'll accept that, if my personality weren't so prickish maybe I'd have more real friends and less time to be arguing on-line! Bash on the Church? Me? Actually, I've gained a renewed respect for the Church since coming to your site; your defense of the Pope and the orders on issues of social importance has been effective. It's stimulated reading and thought on virtues, natural law, paganism, Church history, Aquinas. I'll try not to behave better in the future.*for some reason, none of my html links are accepted, so I'll send the references in another comment.